Jake Troth has been making music for many years. Several bands later, he’s poised to make a huge splash in his solo career. YA got a chance to interview Jake on the phone on topics ranging from Jay Z to Joy Division and his upcoming tours. Not to mention, this interview was conducted as he was preparing for a concert in Philadelphia. Talk about multi-tasking. Watch out for Jake Troth’s upcoming tour dates, we here at YA are marking our calendars already!
Young Adult Magazine: Who is Jake, and how would you best describe your sound?
Jake Troth: Who is Jake? Jake is tall, he’s a tall guy my friends would say. They would probably mention my music. The sound…I like to let people know that my sound is actually pretty positive. I like to promote positive things with my music. There’s a lot of different stuff, it’s really just how I feel. But I try and stay positive. It’s British Pop-Rock influenced by Southern Rap, Metal because I used to play really aggressive music…I try and bring a lot of different sounds into it and stay honest to who I am…Tall. (LOL)
YA: What are some of your favorite parts of the job?
JT: My favorite part right now has been getting to revisit all these songs that I worked on in studios and over the course of a few years. I brought them around to a few trusted friends of mine and we kind of combined forces. So now I’m bringing them to a new group of people to perform live; we’re making adjustments for a live sound with the new group of people. A lot of the elements are designed to be listened to by individuals and now in the live set up we’re making adjustments to all the tracks to give it a sweet communal vibe.
YA: Where would you like to hear your music being played? What kind of venue?
JT: I like to think that I’ve made this album for someone who’s just trying to hang out at night; maybe they’re about to go to bed, and they want to listen to some songs to ease their mind before they go to sleep that mean something. And I’d like to think they want to share that and go to the concert and sing along to the songs together. I feel like every concert experience I’ve gone to that I’ve enjoyed has been because the album felt like I was listening to it by myself, and I could just be me and then go to a concert with a bunch of people and listen to it.
YA: What are you currently listening to on your iPod or mp3 player?
JT: I like Deftones, I listened to them this morning. I listened to Death Trip, they’ve been making crazy music lately and they’re super honest. I listen to a bunch of punk…I listen to a bunch of Bob Marley in my car, it’s a mix. I listen to all my favorite records and I spend a little bit of my day trying to discover new bands, but the majority of time I listen to those bands I really love.
YA: What keeps you focused and ready for a live show?
JT: I was telling my friend last night about stage fright and I was saying at the time I wish that it would ease up, but we ended up saying the moment you stop getting butterflies means you’re not passionate about it. I get really nervous about it because the songs are really precious to me and I want to make sure that they love it.
YA: Which song would you most like to cover, and why?
JT: I’m covering Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” right now. And then the other night we covered Jay Z’s “Public Service Announcement” fused together with Led Zeppelin, yeah it was silly.
YA: Where would you like to see your career take off? What’s planned for the future?
JT: Right now I’m about to go back into the studio and make a song about ghosts, I’m really pumped about that, after that I have band rehearsal and will go play a few shows. Then I’m going to go to New York and maybe play a few shows and after that I’ll go back to LA. I’m really excited about being able to share this collection of tunes.
